All These Oversold Conditions Finally Work Themselves Out

Equities start the day higher as all these oversold conditions finally work themselves out. Wait, we’re on a 5 day losing streak? Sure why not, I mean we only touched an all time high last week might as well throw in a massive string of losses for good measure. Markets…FEEL THE LOVE. Since last we spoke all of nothing has happened on the macro front. Actually something did happen, Washington decided to raise its head out of the swamp and scare us with spooky terms like “Shutdown” and “Cloture” and “Continuing Resolution” and “#Cruzin”. Here, allow me to play my broken record for you one more time: the twerps we elect to Congress aren’t going to be the end of this bull market. If there’s one lesson you should’ve learned over the past 5 years it’s this: elected officials, after repeatedly walking up to the edge of a cliff, eventually decide that the rocks below aren’t worth it. So go ahead and carve “debt ceiling scare” onto the wall with Syria, Cyprus, Italian elections, exchanges breaking, twitter white house bomb stories, etc etc. Just another made up reason to sell stocks that will end on a whimper. Could I be wrong about that? Sure, I’m not infallible. But you know what, no one is, not even WMT. That being said, my opinion is based on watching countless elected blowhards do idiotic things all the way up a deadline and then, to quote Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing. Anyway, let’s see what’s up with this stock market thing today.

After the open we got a nice little bounce courtesy of weekly claims (beat) and GDP (inline). Might I remind you that Weekly Claims is STILL the best concurrent indicator around. Looks pretty stable right? But hey, maybe I’m talking crazy here. A better plan might involve worrying about how the House Tea Party caucus will vote on HR11254 Alpha Bravo, a continuing resolution to fund the.…kill me. How about a resolution to ban pumpkin spice in September? I didn’t know I needed it in everything I could possibly consume in a given day. If I see pumpkin spice water next to coconut water I’m gonna flip out on a hipster. Our early gains faded around lunch as the market settled into a lull. Client interest seems particularly low right now too, maybe no one wants to rock the boat at quarter end? Maybe people are bummed fall has arrived? (I love that picture, may use it again) Winners: REGN, BBBY, YHOO, EBAY, and ADSK. Losers: JBL, WIN, WDC, LLY and HTZ, which must’ve fell for the donut thing (-16%..ouch). By lunch no one really cared as we sat on 1,695, up 15bps. Apologies for being absent lately, was working on my golf game.

The back half saw us touch unchanged but ultimately close at 1,698, up 35bps. Basically a blah day, and if you are trying to make decisions based on what these twirly heads in Washington are doing I’d recommend a quick trip to Ibiza instead! There’s nothing to do right now but wait for the midnight deal that will ultimately kick the can another 10 feet. That’s how it worked in Europe and that’s how it works here. Tread water until then. Final Score: Dow +36bps, S&P500 +35bps, Nasdaq +79bps, Rus2k +46bps.

News Highlights:

Let’s step into a time machine shall we? I love going back in time, learning from the past is key to our future right? Wait…what’s that you say? Internet stocks are hot? Below is a chart showing the performance of the Nasdaq Internet stock index (QNET) since the start of the bull market on March 9th, 2009. As shown, the Internet index is up 387% over this time period, compared to a gain of 207% for the Nasdaq 100 and +150% for the S&P 500. So far in 2013, the Internet stock index is up 48%!

Ok so internet stocks are hot, big deal. Just because they are acting like its 1999 doesn’t mean anything. At least crazy companies like Kozmo.com aren’t coming back. Remember them? They’d deliver you a pack of gum for free anytime, anywhere. Terrible business model, basically a show pony for the dot com madness. Wait…what’s that you say? Google? Google Shopping Express, a service that offers same-day delivery from local stores. Stores price the items on Google Shopping Express the same as they do in-store, so you’ll pay the same amount for whatever you’re buying. Want to give it a try? For a limited time, you can get six months of free, unlimited same-day delivery when you sign up for our free membership

One of my favorite bloggers is on my side: Markets very rarely fall for the same trick twice. We’ve seen this movie before and we all know how it ends. Neither side can agree, the politicians get their time in front of the camera so they can give the appearance that they’re actually doing something useful, we get to the last minute, a deal is cobbled together and we all move on.

Great paragraph here. Not sure the article adds much more, but this is good stuff: The process of negotiating and hiring someone is a microcosm of what your working relationship with them will be. If you are having fun and like the cadence of hiring and negotiating with someone that you are recruiting, you will love working with them. If you find the person slow to respond, uninspired in their responses and ideas, or unpleasant in negotiations, let me assure you: it never gets better. In courtship, you see the best of the person. In negotiation, you see how the person works and competes. In sample work, you see the best of how the person problem solves and ideates. (I had no idea that ideates was a word. Huh.)